Home
by BeautifulFiction
Summary: Happy endings, because everyone needs some fluff sometimes. Roy/Ed.


_Author's Notes: The response to MustangInBlue's request. Her prompt was "Autumn". Happy Birthday, honey! I would have posted it on the actual day, but seeing that we're both a year older on May 3rd I'm afraid I have little intention of being online tomorrow :D Have a great one!_

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Home

Every tree was hung with ruby and amber, festooned with shades of copper and brown. Frost lingered on the breeze, making his breath steam from his lips and stiffening the joints of his automail, but there was still warmth in the sunlight. Colour splashed across the landscape: nature's vibrant last stand. In a couple of weeks Ed knew there would be nothing but bare trees and a sky as cold and fragile as ice, but now the world was giving death the finger. It may be coming, as inevitable as the sunset, but life would be lived until the very end. Not one second wasted, not one moment lost.

Ed stopped under the canopy of an oak tree, leaning back against the thick bole of the trunk and closing his eyes. A smile spread across his lips unbidden as he listened to the hum of central and the playful husks of the wind. The year might be facing its demise, but he had never felt so _alive_.

He knew he was still on some kind of high, buzzing with the dizzy euphoria that comes from success. Only a handful of weeks ago he had expected to lose everything; his future, his life, his lover, all to keep his promise and get his brother's body back from the gate. Instead there was this, this perfect happiness, so alien that he almost didn't recognise it.

This was freedom. He had never realised how tight a cage his promises made until now. He had not just brought Al back from the gate, but he had restored himself as well. Not his arm or his leg, which he could live without, but he had retrieved the future he gave up all rights to as a child. Now time stretched out in front of him, not a story dictating his every action, but a book of blank pages waiting to be filled. He had always believed in being the master of his own choices, of taking the cards he was dealt and somehow winning, but for the first time he could actually believe in those convictions.

Leaving the army, handing in the watch, that was the last step in removing the shackles of his past, and finally he had been able to step out of that pointless contract today. No more guns or pain or stupid orders. No more trailing across the country on assignments, and, most importantly, no more hiding the truth of how he felt.

It had been almost a year since he and Roy had fallen into each other's arms and beds, finding bitter-sweet solace in the hot punch of lust. Over the months that passion became tempered with something softer and infinitely stronger, something able to withstand the strain of secrecy. For almost a year Ed had stood in the office and pretended that he didn't care, that he couldn't see the exhaustion and pain and fear that Roy could hide from everyone but him. Almost a year of not being able to reach out and touch unless they were behind closed doors, and now, finally, that was over.

He took a deep breath, smelling damp earth and something else that tinged the clean air with warmth. Opening his eyes he saw Roy standing on the edge of the shade cast by the tree, a shadow of blue, black and perfect pale skin, sexy as hell and all _his. _His to touch and taste and take without any risk of being court-martialled over fraternisation, or separated for their own good. There could still be consequences, would still be crude whispers behind rough hands, but there was nothing that they couldn't face together.

'How does it feel,' Roy asked quietly, eyes intense black as he walked slowly closer, his uniform whispering promises, 'knowing you never have to take another order?'

Ed smiled, reaching out to tangle his fingers in Roy's jacket, pulling him closer until they stood chest to chest, already breathless with a need that had not faded since that first time. 'Didn't do what I was told anyway,' Ed mumbled, giving a half-hearted glare as Roy laughed in agreement, raising his gloved hand to his cheek before curling his fingers in the hair at the nape of Ed's neck.

Roy bent his head, brushing his lips softly over Ed's, teasing them gently apart so he could have his taste. The fire was a wild thing, no less powerful for its familiarity: it was a racing, roaring heat that surged through Ed's body, pooling low in his stomach and flaring along his nerves. The moan escaped him, rough and needy, and the answering sound in Roy's throat made his knees shake as he tilted his head, stroking his tongue along Roy's bottom lip and scraping the tender flesh with the faintest edge of teeth.

How had they hidden this? Ed still couldn't believe it. The pair of them were bright with love, flushed through with it from soul to skin. How could anyone look at them and not immediately see it? Was the world so selfishly blind that its gaze could overlook something so painfully, stunningly obvious as this?

They broke apart, both breathing hard as want spiralled through them. Roy nuzzled Ed's hairline, a hoarse laugh catching in his throat as he murmured, 'I've wanted to do that for months, to kiss you and not care who sees us.' He dropped his lips to Ed's neck, pinching tender flesh, tongue lapping and teeth marking as Ed bucked helplessly.

'_Mine_.'

'Mine,' Ed snarled in response, pressing his hips meaningfully against the bulge in Roy's uniform pants, rubbing himself like a cat along the length of his lover's body, wanting to touch him everywhere at once and keening when Roy took a step back, luring Ed out from under the bower of gold.

'Home?' Roy husked, voice soft.

The automatic denial that he had told Al time and again over the years sprang to Ed's lips. They didn't have a home. They had burned it, and there was no going back.

Except it wasn't true any more. That life was over, a closed chapter that never had to be suffered again.

Gently he took Roy's hand, twining their fingers together as he stretched on tiptoe to kiss him again, softly this time.

'Home.'

_End_


End file.
